National News and World News

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Wrapping up six days of marathon nuclear talks with mixed results, Iran and six world powers prepared Tuesday to issue a general statement agreeing to continue negotiations in a new phase aimed at reaching a comprehensive accord by the end of June, officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — The United States will pledge Tuesday to cut its greenhouse gas emissions up to 28 percent as part of a global treaty aimed at preventing the worst effects of climate change. The Obama administration’s contribution to the treaty codifies a commitment President Barack Obama first made late last year in Beijing.

SAN FRANCISCO >> Two former federal agents have been charged with stealing digital currency during their investigation into an online black market that allowed users to buy and sell drugs and other illegal items.

WASHINGTON >> The Supreme Court has denied an appeal from former California high school students who were ordered to turn their American flag T-shirts inside out during a celebration of the Cinco de Mayo holiday at school.

WASHINGTON >> A Houston housewife who has quietly collected rare Civil War images for 50 years has sold more than 500 early photographs to the Library of Congress. The library announced the acquisition Sunday and is placing the first 77 images online.

WASHINGTON >> Potential Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley said Sunday that the country needs fresh perspectives for confronting its problems and criticized the prospects of the Clinton and Bush families yet again seeking the White House.

ABUJA, Nigeria >> Boko Haram fighters attacked poll stations in northeast Nigeria and a governor demanded elections be canceled in an oil-rich southern state Sunday as the count started for a presidential election too close to call.

BEIRUT >> A new video released by the Islamic State group on Sunday shows its fighters cutting off the heads of eight men said to be Shiite Muslims. The video posted on social media said the men were beheaded in the central Syrian province of Hama.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland >> Iran is considering demands for further cuts to its uranium enrichment program but is pushing back on how long it must limit technology it could use to make atomic arms, Western officials involved in the nuclear talks said Sunday.

CONAKRY, Guinea >> The West African countries hit hardest by Ebola are ramping up efforts to eradicate the deadly disease using lockdowns, restrictions on burials and a warning to survivors about the potential dangers of unprotected sex.

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt >> A two-day Arab summit ended Sunday with a vow to defeat Iranian-backed Shiite rebels in Yemen and the formal unveiling of plans to form a joint Arab intervention force, setting the stage for a potentially dangerous clash between U.

MONTABAUR, Germany >> The pastor of the Lutheran church in Andreas Lubitz’s hometown said Sunday that the community stands by him and his family, despite the fact that prosecutors blame the 27-year-old co-pilot for causing the plane crash that killed 150 people in southern France.

VATICAN CITY >> Pope Francis opened solemn Holy Week services with Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square, stressing humility and remembering the dead in the Germanwings crash. At the end of Mass outside St.

BEIRUT >> Syrians fled Idlib Sunday, fearing government reprisals a day after opposition fighters and a powerful local al-Qaida affiliate captured the northwestern town, activists said. Idlib, with a population of around 165,000 people, is the second provincial capital to fall to the opposition after Raqqa, which is now a stronghold of the Islamic State group.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates >> Just four percent of emergency work in Syria for Palestinians has been funded so far this year, threatening the viability of a cash assistance program that UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness described on Sunday as a “lifeline” for refugees.

TUNIS, Tunisia >> Tunisia’s prime minister said Sunday a leading suspect in a deadly museum attack on foreign tourists has been killed in anti-terrorist operations, as tens of thousands of Tunisians marched through the capital to denounce extremist violence.

NEW YORK >> Business was brisk at the weekend box-office, where the DreamWorks animated alien adventure “Home” beat out the Will Ferrell-Kevin Hart comedy “Get Hard” with a resounding debut of $54 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

NEWARK, N.J. >> First Lady Michelle Obama celebrated the beauty, power and tenacity of black women while spreading her own message of education for girls at Black Girls Rock!, an annual event honoring trailblazing women of color from all walks of life.

Christians around the world are marking Palm Sunday by waving fronds, attending church services and visiting sites in the Holy Land at the start of the Holy Week that ends with Easter. Crowds of faithful gathered in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

WASHINGTON >> Former technology executive Carly Fiorina says she is more than 90 percent likely to seek the Republican presidential nomination. and she is questioning the confidence people can have in likely Democratic contender Hillary Rodham Clinton.

NEW YORK >> Searching with hands and dogs through scoops of rubble from three apartment buildings leveled in an apparent gas explosion, emergency workers painstakingly looked for signs of two missing people Saturday, though authorities acknowledged the chances were slim.

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria >> Boko Haram extremists killed 41 people, including a legislator, and scared hundreds of people from polling stations in the northeast, but millions voted across Nigeria Saturday in the most closely contested presidential race in the nation’s history.

SACRAMENTO >> A former prison gang kingpin and a black revolutionary-turned-international fugitive are among 74 inmates who owe their freedom to a year-old California policy of granting parole for convicts who are deemed too old to commit new crimes.

MOGADISHU, Somalia >> Blood spattered utensils, bullet-pocked walls and overturned chairs mark the reception area of a prominent hotel in the Somali capital following an attack by Islamic extremists that killed at least 24, including six attackers.

BOSTON >> A decorated officer remained in a medically induced coma Saturday, a night after he was shot in the face during a traffic stop that ended when other officers fatally shot his attacker, Boston’s police commissioner said.

MONTABAUR, Germany >> Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz appears to have hidden evidence of an illness from his employers, including having been excused by a doctor from work the day he crashed a passenger plane into a mountain, prosecutors said Friday.

WASHINGTON >> Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid announced Friday he will not seek re-election to another term, saying he wanted to focus on bringing Democrats back to power in the Senate rather than his own re-election.

MEXICO CITY — The combination of James Bond espionage and Mexico’s crime and chaos always promised to be a sizzling cocktail. But the stories emerging out of the filming of “Spectre” in the Mexican capital have dramas worthy of a spy flick themselves.

ROME — Italy’s highest court overturned the murder conviction against Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend Friday over the 2007 slaying of Knox’s roommate, bringing to a definitive end the high-profile case that captivated trial-watchers on both sides of the Atlantic.

SANAA, Yemen >> Saudi Arabia bombed key military installations in Yemen on Thursday after announcing a broad regional coalition to oust Shiite rebels that forced the country’s embattled president to flee.

PARIS >> Passengers with moments to live screamed in terror and the pilot frantically pounded on the locked cockpit door as a 27-year-old German co-pilot deliberately and wordlessly smashed an Airbus carrying 150 people into an Alpine mountainside.

WASHINGTON >> One of the most broadcast songs of the 20th century, Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me,” has been selected for preservation at the Library of Congress, along with recordings from Joan Baez, The Righteous Brothers, Steve Martin and the darker sounds of the band Radiohead.

GAZA — It’s evening, and the neighborhood of Shejaiya is completely dark. Metal rods hang at odd angles off of crumbling skeletons of buildings, and occasionally the pale neon glow of an LED flashlight illuminates a face walking by.

WASHINGTON — A U.S. official says the Army sergeant who abandoned his post in Afghanistan and was held by the Taliban for five years will be court martialed on charges of desertion and avoiding military service.

WASHINGTON >> The Associated Press has learned that two Americans presumed to have died in the plane crash in the southern French Alps include a U.S. government contractor and her daughter. The mother was identified as Yvonne Selke of Nokesville, Virginia, a longtime and highly regarded employee of Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.

SEYNE-LES-ALPES, France >> The first half of Germanwings Flight 9525 was chilling in its normalcy. It took off from Barcelona en route to Duesseldorf, climbing up over the Mediterranean and turning over France.

SEYNE-LES-ALPES, France >> A Germanwings jet carrying 150 people from Barcelona to Duesseldorf slammed into a remote section of the French Alps on Tuesday, sounding like an avalanche as it scattered pulverized debris across a rocky mountain and down its steep ravines.

Three dozen members of Congress from California, Oregon and Washington on Tuesday pressed for full funding of a West Coast earthquake early warning system. The group on Tuesday sent a letter to the House Appropriations Committee asking that the U.

NEW ORLEANS >> After nearly a week in a prison’s mental health unit, millionaire Robert Durst is scheduled to return Monday to a New Orleans court, where his lawyers will argue that he was illegally arrested on murder and weapons charges and should be released.

KENNER, La. >> A machete-wielding attacker who died hours after being shot by a sheriff’s deputy who stopped his rampage at New Orleans’ international airport had a bag loaded with Molotov cocktails, authorities say.

BEIRUT >> Syrian insurgents captured several government airmen after their helicopter crashed in a rebel-held area of northwestern Syria on Sunday, activists said. The Idlib Media Center and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the helicopter went down near Jabal al-Zawiya, some 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of the town of Maarat al-Numan in Idlib province.

LONDON >> Richard III was finally getting the ceremony and honor a king deserves, 530 years after his ignominious death in battle, Hundreds of people turned out in Leicestershire on Sunday as a procession carrying the remains of the medieval king, whose bones were found under a parking lot, headed to a cathedral where the monarch will be properly reburied.

WASHINGTON >> The pace of U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan will headline Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s visit to Washington, yet America’s exit from the war remains tightly hinged to the abilities of the Afghan forces that face a tough fight against insurgents this spring.

JERUSALEM >> Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said Sunday that the new Israeli government will have to serve “all the citizens of Israel,” and called for the country to begin a “healing process” after a stormy election campaign that highlighted deep internal divisions.

KABUL, Afghanistan >> Afghan women’s rights activists dressed head-to-toe in black broke with tradition Sunday to carry the coffin of a woman who was beaten to death by a mob in the capital Kabul over allegations she had burned a Quran.